Thanks for this info, lots of useful information.
I do hope though that bots will play a far smaller role in the future regarding payouts and reputation score.

I'm a very big fan of curation, and it's pretty hard to help somebody's good post get noticed when others are paying for bots and or self-voting. I don't mind that people selfvote and pay for bots, it just shouldn't be possible to buy you way to the trending and hot list. It should be a matter of people finding the good stuff and helping it get noticed.
And maybe for that reputation could play a bigger part, so we could have more superstar curators, a bit like spotify I guess.
Anyway, thanks for the read.